News

To ensure the NHS can continue to deliver the best emergency and planned care across north central London during the winter and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, temporary changes to services for children and young people will commence on 28 September.

At the end of July, NHS England and Improvement signalled that we are moving into Phase 3 of our response to Covid-19. This involves ensuring that we are able to meet the needs of non-Covid patients, with Covid-19 still expected to be in circulation for some time to come. Health and care organisations in NCL are working together to ensure that we are taking appropriate infection prevention and control measures; planning and managing the risk of local outbreaks; and prioritising the health and care needs of all our communities.

We recognise that Covid-19 presents exceptional difficulties and uncertainties for patients and all providers within primary and secondary care are focussed on supporting patients throughout their clinical pathway. We want people to feel safe coming to appointments at hospitals, clinics and at GP surgeries. We appreciate that some people will still be nervous of attending appointments and have committed that in this unprecedented period patients will be kept on the waiting list, if they choose to defer their appointments or procedures. This policy will be reviewed regularly.

The move to an Integrated Care System (ICS) model in NCL means a consistent and coordinated approach to the delivery of services and use of resources. With organisations and teams working in partnership where it improves experience and outcomes for residents. To help us do this, we want to establish ICS leads, who will have responsibility for a portfolio of work across the system. These leads will come from organisations within NCL, but will have accountability for working with system and delivering changes and improvements. We have recently appointed leads for finance and workforce and are delighted to welcome them to the leadership team.

As health and care providers across North Central London (NCL) are increasing planned and routine services, we are working to ensure that we can boost capacity and safely provide testing for NCL’s residents. This includes establishing community phlebotomy hubs across NCL. The first of the new phlebotomy hubs went live this week at Holloway Community Health Centre and will be able to provide an additional 1,500 appointments per week for Haringey and Islington residents. Over the next couple of weeks additional sites will be opened that will provide a similar number of additional appointments for NCL’s other boroughs.

NCL’s system has restarted elective care over the past few weeks and our clinicians have been prioritising care for the most urgent patients based on clinical need. Our infection prevention and control leads across NCL have been working together to implement robust and consistent infection prevention and control measures following national guidance, including physical distancing, face masks for all staff, patients and visitors and appropriate use of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). This will ensure our health and care settings are as safe as possible for staff and patients.

In NCL, across London and the rest of the country, NHS staff are finding that, because of worry about coronavirus, people are delaying contacting their GP or going to hospital to discuss a symptom that could indicate a possible cancer. This fear is understandable, but we want to reassure everyone in NCL that doctors and GP teams are still here for their patients. GP practices and hospitals are working differently due to the pandemic, for example offering a telephone consultation or a video chat with a doctor or nurse, instead of a face to face meeting. If patients have to attend in person GP practices are organised to reduce the risk of patients being exposed to any infection. Hospitals have put in place arrangements to maximise physical distancing and to provide the safest possible access to care.

NCL is now ready to restart some of the urgent elective care that had been paused over the past few months, in line with national guidance, to allow health and care professionals to support the increased demand in services due to the pandemic. A great deal of work is ongoing to ensure that we are prepared for the restart of elective activity including putting in place infection prevention and control measures to ensure that we can deliver care as safely as possible.

It's National Volunteers Week and we want to thank all the hundreds of volunteers across our five boroughs who give so generously of their time, experience and skills each week. Special thanks to the hundreds of residents who stepped up during the pandemic to help support people through it.

In North Central London we are changing the way we deliver services so that we can continue to meet the health and care needs of our residents during the pandemic. We have accelerated and adapted the use of HealtheIntent, a population health management system, to support our response to the pandemic and ensure resources are directed to residents that need them most. The Diabetes Prevention Programme has switched its services online and will continuing offering personalised coaching support to residents at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. In Primary Care over 13,300 patients made use of an online consultation tool last week enabling requests to be triaged and directed to the most appropriate service.

Over the past week we have been busy preparing preliminary plans for the next phase of our response to the pandemic, and we have now submitted our high level plans to NHS England for review. Partners representing councils, public health, commissioners and providers are working very closely to deliver integrated support to help care home staff and residents. Our response has included the provision of support at borough and NCL-wide level, and we are in daily contact with care providers to ensure that resources are targeted where there is most need.

This week has seen NCL’s health and care system begin to move into the second phase in our response to the pandemic. With lots of work ongoing to plan for the future this is also a good time to reflect on our response to date and what we have learnt.